sendmail hangs indefinitely on service start with error: Recipient names must be specified

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • When our RHEL 5 & RHEL 6 systems are booting, they hang forever when they get to sendmail -- with the following error:

    Starting sendmail: Recipient names must be specified
    

    The hanging means that all the services after sendmail don't get started, and neither do the console logins
    Logging in over ssh works and we can run service sendmail stop to get the system to finish booting
    However, service sendmail start from the cmdline also hangs until we press Ctrl-c

Environment

  • sendmail with modified /etc/sysconfig/sendmail
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

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